While the luxuries of solitude and air conditioning trump a
potentially sweaty city bus, everybody hates traffic. And if the
roads are less congested, people won't need to spend as much time
traveling on them.

"We're geographically constrained in terms of auto capacity we
can add to the network," Scott Kubly, director of the Seattle
Department of Transportation, told
Next City. "If we're going to continue to grow, we need to
use our streets more
efficiently."

Seattle is growing fast.
In 1990 it had 516,000 people. By 2010, it had
608,000. The
rate's only increasing: Between 2000 and 2010, kids under 5
years old
made up the largest portion of Seattle population growth.
Those kids will soon be getting behind the wheel — and adding to
the congestion — unless the city can intervene.

Seattle recently
introduced a fairly extensive light rail system. People are
still getting on board with boarding the train: The
city's 2011 ridership goal of 39,210 was
hit for the first time in August 2014.

To make the city more efficient as a whole, Seattle
has devised two related city planning projects,
one for the end of 2015 and another for 20 years down the
road. Both see the
city moving away from single-person commutes through the use of walking paths
and lanes for biking and carpooling. It will also create
a
Future Land Use Mapthat
outlines how regions will be used and provides flexibility
when planning future construction.

Seattle could take its cues from Tokyo or Stockholm, the
two cities with the
lowest rates of traffic fatalities in the world. In those
cities, bike lanes and railway systems give people plenty of
flexibility if they don't want to drive.

The Danes get even more extreme. In Copenhagen, cars are treated
like second-class vehicles. Traffic lights give preference
to bicyclists thanks to the city's "green waves," which offer
uninterrupted green lights if bikes stay at a consistent speed.
When snow falls in the Danish capital,
bike lanes are cleared before the roads.